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Hot-Button Issue: The ‘Hot’ Factor

JOHN F. KENNEDY was a striking man — by most accounts, the best-looking person ever to occupy the White House — but he lived in an age before Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, chat groups and discussion threads made that a subject to debate with as much fervor as health care reform and offshore tax havens. Not so this year’s presidential candidates.

Thus, if you typed “Is Barack Obama hot?” into Google last week, among the 10,600 results would be a link to a Facebook page “How hot is Barack Obama?,” with instructions to “ ‘like’ this if you think Barack Obama is the hottest U.S. president ever!!!” Results: 1,238 “likes” as of Friday morning, and comments like one from an admirer identified as Juanita Mitchell Dillion: “Fine, Fine, Fine.”

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For President Obama, left, and Mitt Romney, taxes and health care may be subject to debate. On some social media sites, it’s who’s hot.Credit
Bauergriffinonline.Com

Meanwhile, a “Barack Obama shirtless” search got 68,000 hits, most with links to pictures of the president on vacation in Hawaii.

A similar search turned up just 8 results on Google to the question “Is Mitt Romney hot?” But there was also a “Mitt Romney is Hot like a Muffin in the Sack” Facebook page with 21 likes, as well as 5,300 Google hits for a “Mitt Romney shirtless” query. (But most of those seemed to be of links to blog posts and pictures about his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan.)

The search about the sex appeal of the two candidates also turned up posts about a TV reporter once asking Mr. Obama if his “GQ cover looks,” as she put it, made it hard for him to relate to working-class people. (His somewhat drawn-out answer seemed to be no.) And at the Web site democraticunderground.com, there is a popular discussion thread asking “Is Obama not the best looking president we’ve had in decades?” (The consensus seemed to be yes.)

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Mitt Romney.Credit
Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Last week, when he and the first lady were on “The View,” the president made it clear he didn’t seem entirely unaware of his physical appeal, joking (or was he?) with the cast that “I told folks I’m just supposed to be eye candy here for you guys.”

Of course, Mr. Obama’s looks didn’t go unnoticed when he was just a candidate and not yet the president. Most famously, a video called “I Got a Crush on Obama” by Amber Lee Ettinger, who became known as Obama Girl, went viral in 2007 and was named one of the decade’s top memes by Newsweek. (Sample lyrics: “You seem to float onto the floor/Democratic Convention 2004/I never wanted anybody more/Than I want you/So I put down my Kerry sign/Knew I had to make you mine.”)